It’s often been noted that great artists and poets and scientists and that ‘creative’ lot seem to do their best work early in life. (When John Keats was my age, for example, he’d been dead for 14 years.)
This was hammered home to me this morning as I cooked bacon and eggs for SOBUMD, the Human Tape Recorder, and myself – the Reigning Queen of Pink has no truck with eggs, but claimed the bacon by divine right. Number One Son had eaten more than 2 hours earlier, having woken at 0Dark:30 to play international Wii MarioCart challenges under his internet pseudonym, Wiimaster™. (This proves that on the Internet, no one knows the Wiimaster is 8, or that he hasn’t had his meds, which might explain why people on the other side of the planet seem surprised that someone with the cajones to call themselves “Wiimaster™“ keeps driving down the track in the wrong direction, crashing into the other players. He doesn’t worry about what happens in the game; Number One Son happens to other people.)
But I digress. Once SOBUMD and the rest of the girls woke, I snapped off the couch and out of my coffee-induced reveries and got to cooking. The HTR was press-ganged into service whisking the eggs, and SOBUMD did her part as DJ – which is surely a term as antiquated as “Tape Recorder”, but again, “MP3 Playback Device Jockey / YouTube Selection Committee” just lacks that je ne se qua.
So there I was, wreaking hen’s fruit with sautéed fungi and goat cheese and frying thick smoked strips of yummy pig, when SOBUMD graced us with the dulcet tones of Simon and Garfunkel. It hit me, as I wailed along with Paul and Art that I, too, was a rock, and that I, too, was an island, that this song could never have been written by a parent.
“I am alone.” OK, epic fail right from the start. The concept of “alone” starts to mean, you know, except for the baby, I am alone. “Silent shroud of snow” – First off, the word ‘silent’ moves into off-line storage with the first kid; rather than being part of your daily vocabulary, it’s just a distant corollary related to the omnipresent “Can you please shut up for one second!”
So let’s review how this classic might have gone if Paul had tried to write it while home with his 3rd Grader:
A winters day,
and the goddamn schools are closed.
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the yard below
At my crazy kids out playing in the snow.
I need some sleep, I need some coffee.
These old board-books,
And this ancient stuffed giraffe,
I should throw this stuff out.
Next time I clean their rooms, where the hell’d I put the broom?
I swear to god I’ve lost my friggin’ mind!
I need some sleep, I need some coffee.
And I can’t sleep while they’re outside.
And my coffee’s gotten cold.
Ya, just not the same.